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The Pretty Horses the Horse Trade and the Early American West, 1775–1825 by Dan Flores

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The Pretty Horses the Horse Trade and the Early American West, 1775–1825 by Dan Flores Bringing Home All the Pretty Horses The Horse Trade and the Early American West, 1775–1825 by Dan Flores n the summer of 1834, just two years after having visited and painted the tribes of the Missouri River and northern plains country, western artist IGeorge Catlin got his first opportunity to observe and paint that counterpoint world, hundreds of miles to the south, on the plains of what is now western Oklahoma. Accompanying an American military expedition that sought to treat with peoples like the Comanches and the Kiowas, Catlin had a singular chance to see firsthand the similarities and differences between these two regions of the early-nineteenth-century American West. From the 1780s to the 1820s, as corporate investment gave rise to the fur trade in the northern West, the wild horse trade on the southern plains generated an economy that dominated the Southwest. In 184, artist George Catlin visited the plains that are now part of western Oklahoma and recorded his observations of the Comanches and other horse-trading tribes, including their “usual mode of taking the wild horses . by throwing the lasso, whilst pursuing them at full speed.” Detail, George Catlin, North American Indians, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1926), 2:plate 161, quote p. 65 On the Missouri, Catlin had traveled and of 1834,“is stocked, not only with buffaloes, but with lived with fur traders from one of the big companies numerous bands of wild horses, many of which we engaged in competition for wealth skinned from the saw every day.” He went on, with obvious admira- backs of beavers, river otters, muskrats, and bison. tion: “The wild horse of these regions is a small, but The artist had painted (and mourned) the great very powerful animal; with an exceedingly prominent destruction then under way there. In the different eye, sharp nose, high nostril, small feet and delicate ecology of the southern plains, however, Catlin saw leg; and undoubtedly, . [has] sprung from a stock only a small-scale facsimile of the great economic introduced by the Spaniards.”1 engines that were stripping the northern landscapes No other denizen of the plains was “so wild and so of valuable animals, and on these southern prairies an sagacious as the horse,” Catlin wrote. “So remarkably altogether different animal caught his attention. “The keen is their eye, that they will generally run ‘at the tract of country over which we passed, between the sight,’ when they are a mile distant . and when in False Washita and this place,” he wrote while traveling motion, will seldom stop short of three or four miles.” in the vicinity of the Wichita Mountains that summer Like many observers, the artist was struck with the In the Wichita Mountains (below, c. 1900) where Catlin traveled during the summer of 184, he observed that “[t]here is no other animal on the prairies so wild and so sagacious as the horse.” 4 M O N T A N A T HE MAGAZINE OF WESTERN H ISTORY sheer beauty of the horse in its wild state: “Some were “by no means handsome” and had cost only thirty- milk white, some jet black—others were sorrel, and five dollars in trade goods, Audubon was intrigued bay, and cream colour—many were an iron grey; and enough to try him out. The horse proved a delight. others were pied, containing a variety of colours on He had a sweet gait that covered forty miles a day. the same animal. Their manes were very profuse, and He leapt over woodland logs “as lightly as an elk,” hanging in the wildest confusion over their necks and was duly cautious yet a quick study in new situations, faces—and their long tails swept the ground.” and was strong and fearless when coaxed to swim the At roughly the same point in time that Catlin Ohio River. He was steady when birds flushed and expressed his admiration for the wild horses of the Audubon shot them from the saddle. And he left a southern plains, back in the horse country of Ken- “superb” horse valued at three hundred dollars in tucky, John James Audubon, Catlin’s fellow painter the dust. Audubon quickly bought Barro for fifty (and, in private, a thorn in his side), wrote that he had dollars silver and, gloating over his discovery, con- become acquainted with a man who had just returned cluded that “the importation of horses of this kind from “the country in the neighbourhood of the head from the Western Prairies might improve our breeds waters of the Arkansas River” where he had obtained generally.”2 from the Osages a recently captured, four-year-old What is most intriguing, historically, about wild horse named “Barro.” While the little horse was Catlin’s and Audubon’s wild horse epiphanies is that J. A. Taft, photographer, U.S. Geological Survey; quote, George Catlin, they came so late. In fact, nearly simultaneously with the evolution of the fur trade on the northern plains, the remarkable wild horse herds of the southern plains had generated an economy of capture and trade (and often, theft) that, from the 1780s to the 1820s, had fairly dominated the region. Wild horses from herds like those Catlin saw in Oklahoma had been driven up the Natchez Trace to the horse markets in New Orleans and Ken- tucky at least as early as the 1790s, North American Indians, half a century before Audubon’s test ride on Barro. That neither man seemed aware of this in the 1830s is fairly strong evidence for 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1926), 2:64 the underground nature of the early horse trade in the West—which is why historians, as well as Catlin and Audubon, have missed it. Yet on the sweeping plains south of the Arkansas River, dur- ing the period when Americans were becoming such a presence in the West, this was the fur trade’s equivalent, if on a smaller scale. The wild horse trade schooled many diverse Indian peoples in the nuances of the market economy, D A N F LORES | S U mm E R 2 0 0 8 M O N T A N A T HE MAGAZINE OF WESTERN H ISTORY To make this drawing, Catlin sneaked up on a wild horse herd and “used my pencil for some time, while we were under cover of a little hedge of bushes which effectually screened us from their view.” He also described the wild horse as a “small, but very powerful animal; with an exceedingly prominent eye, sharp nose, high nostril, small feet and delicate leg.” George Catlin, North American Indians, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1926), 2:plate 160, quote p. 64 D A N F LORES | S U mm E R 2 0 0 8 7 1899), 209 Capt. William F. Drannan, to the horse markets of Kentucky. Wilkinson had raised Nolan in his own household, where the young man had no doubt absorbed dinner-table talk of revolution and westward expansion. That may have Thirty-one Years on the Plains and in the Mountains given Jefferson pause. He asked for other opinions about Nolan.3 The image that emerges of this shadowy and rather legendary figure is of a literate, athletic, and adventurous young man who was confident enough in his wide-ranging abilities to attempt things about Wild horses from herds like those Catlin saw had been driven up which other men only speculated. William Dunbar, the Natchez Trace to the horse the Mississippi scientist who became Jefferson’s markets in New Orleans and primary associate in assembling information on the Kentucky at least as early as the 1790s. Vice President Thomas southwestern reaches of the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson, sensing that the wild (Chicago, knew Nolan and told Jefferson he thought the man horse trade might play an eco- nomic, diplomatic, and geopoliti- lacked sufficient education and that he was flawed cal role similar to the one played by eccentricities “many and great.” Nevertheless, by the fur trade in the northern Dunbar wrote, Nolan “was not destitute of roman- West, made inquiries about it as early as 1798. tic principles of honor united to the highest personal courage.” Another Jeffersonian who knew Nolan, provided Spanish Texas a revenue base, intrigued Daniel Clark Jr., of New Orleans, told Jefferson he a famous American president, and drew itinerant thought Nolan “an extraordinary Character,” one American mustangers who quite literally carried the “whom Nature seems to have formed for Enterprises flag with them into vast, horizontal yellow landscapes of which the rest of Mankind are incapable.”4 whose ownership seemed up for grabs. What Jefferson learned from these informants was that, as early as 1790–91, when Nolan was barely The wild horse trade of the West had first twenty years old, he had embarked on a two-year come to the official attention of the United States in journey into the Southwest, carrying a passport from the period and in the same flurry of motion that would Esteban Miró, the Spanish governor of Louisiana. eventually add the Louisiana Purchase to the early He ultimately met and traveled with Wichita and republic. At the turn of the nineteenth century, bands Comanche Indians, providing them with an initial, of western wild horses were still primarily confined apparently very favorable, impression of Anglo- to the deserts, plains, and prairies of the Southwest. Americans. Judging from what seem today very pre- They first stirred interest from the wider world cise descriptions of a part of the continent then almost during the years when Thomas Jefferson, as vice unknown to anyone except tribal people, Nolan got president in the John Adams administration, all the way to New Mexico, along the way learning was already contemplating various schemes for that the numerous southern plains Indians were dis- understanding and ultimately exploring the West, satisfied with Spanish trade and very desirous of especially its southern reaches.
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